Free Republic

Utah Congresswoman Mia Love had to fight back tears as she discussed the Planned Parenthood videos with Lou Dobbs on Fox Business. "Our job is to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — first and foremost, life," Love said. "To see what’s actually happening to babies while they are still alive…it’s horrific. This is not about a right or left issue, this is about right or wrong." Love said she has always been pro-life and called on the American people to speak up against the barbarism being exposed. "We’ve got to do everything we can to make sure...

DENVER — The owner of the Colorado’s Gold King Mine says he tried to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from gaining access to his property, but that he relented after the agency threatened to pound him with ruinous fines if he refused. Mine owner Todd Hennis said that he had little choice four years ago but to allow in an EPA-led crew, which triggered the Aug. 5 blowout that sent 3 million gallons of toxic orange wastewater down the Animas River. “When you are a small guy and you’re having a $35,000 a day fine accrue against you, you have...

Since the release of the first incriminating Planned Parenthood video from the Center for Medical Progress, a flurry of investigations have ensued. These videos at least show evidence indicating a strong likelihood of illegal activity, and at worst show despicable, callous disregard for the law, human life, and women. Here are the ongoing official investigations and government actions taken against Planned Parenthood. As of Wednesday, five states have made moves to defund Planned Parenthood, or end participation in the funneling of federal money to the unscrupulous organization. These states are New Hampshire, Utah, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama. Thirteen states have...

Gov. Gary Herbert has ordered all state agencies to stop funneling federal funds to the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah. The federal government provides grants to Planned Parenthood, which are distributed through the Utah Department of Health. Utah law bars any organization from using state funds for abortions, and that prohibition extends to Planned Parenthood's federal grants, Herbert said in a statement Friday afternoon. The move came in response to the release of secretly recorded videos by an anti-abortion group showing Planned Parenthood officials in Houston describing how they provide fetal tissue from abortions for medical research.

Dave Taylor, the retired geologist who predicted the EPA project that caused the 3 million gallon toxic spill into the Animas River in Colorado would fail, tells Breitbart News, “I didn’t really know they were going to fool with the Gold King mine in addition to the Red and Bonita mine.”In a July 30 letter to the editor of the Silverton Standard, Taylor predicted that the EPA project to plug the Red and Bonita mine would fail “within 7 to 120 days,” and the 500 gallons per minute flow of toxic waste from those mines which the project stopped temporarily...

Fenton, Mo., company was tasked with mitigating pollutants from closed mine. Missouri-based Environmental Restoration LLC was the contractor whose work caused a mine spill in Colorado that released an estimated 3 million gallons of toxic sludge into a major river system ... The EPA, which was overseeing the servicing of the mine, had previously said an unnamed outside contractor was using heavy equipment when it accidentally triggered a breach in the abandoned Gold King Mine, letting out wastewater that had built up inside it. “Environmental Restoration LLC was working at the direction at EPA ... Environmental Restoration is one of...

The EPA is trying to cheat Navajo Indians by getting them to sign away their rights to future claims from the agency’s Gold King Mine disaster, tribal officials charged Wednesday, adding more to the administration’s public relations problems over the spill that threatens critical Southwest waterways. EPA officials were going door-to-door asking Navajo, some of whom don’t speak English as their primary language, to sign a form that offers to pay damages incurred so far from the spill, but waiving the right to come back and ask for more if their costs escalate or if they discover bigger problems, ......

A week before The EPA disastrously leaked millions of gallons of toxic waste into The Animas River in Colorado, this letter to the editor was published in The Silverton Standard & The Miner local newspaper, authored by a retired geologist detailing verbatim, how EPA would foul the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money...

Last Wednesday, a small EPA-supervised work crew inspecting the Gold King mine accidentally knocked a hole in a waste pit, releasing at least three million gallons of acidic liquid laden with toxic heavy metals. (ABC) This letter to editor, posted below, was published in The Silverton Standard and The Miner local newspaper, authored by a retired geologist, one week before EPA mine spill. The letter detailed verbatim, how EPA officials would foul up the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money. It the Gold King mine was declared a superfund site it would essentially kill future development...

SALT LAKE CITY — A man who allegedly tried to force his way into a house claiming he was a police officer was beaten, handcuffed and held until the real police arrived to arrest him. Just after 6 a.m. Monday, a man went to the back door of 733 E. Kensington, "showed a police badge through the house window and said, 'Police!'" according to a Salt Lake County Jail report. The man was not wearing a police uniform but did have a pair of handcuffs, said Salt Lake police detective Greg Wilking. He attempted to force his way into the...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Anger was mounting Monday at the federal Environmental Protection Agency over the massive spill of millions of gallons of toxic sludge from a Colorado gold mine that has already fouled three major waterways and may be three times bigger than originally reported. An 80-mile length of mustard-colored water -- laden with arsenic, lead, copper, aluminum and cadmium -- is working its way south toward New Mexico and Utah, following Wednesday's accidental release from the Gold King Mine, near Durango, when an EPA cleanup crew destabilized a dam of loose rock lodged in the mine. The crew was...

Gov. John Hickenlooper has pledged that Colorado will comply with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, but this effort to cut so-called “CO2 pollution” could come at a dear price to the state’s coal industry. ... Colorado is among the top states in coal production and consumption. In the year 2013, 64 percent of energy produced in Colorado came from coal, 20 percent from natural gas, and around 15 percent from various renewables including hydroelectric, biomass, solar and wind. The history of Colorado’s coal mining industry stretches over the past two centuries. Not to mention, coal jobs have a multiplier effect...

The EPA announced that some of its regulators working in Colorado dumped a million gallons of orange waste water containing sediments and metals into the Animas river. In their defense the machinery they were working with was described as heavy so there’s that. Oh, and they said it was an accident. The companies responsible for Love Canal in the 1970s probably didn’t realize they could use that as an excuse. If a company had done it, there would be Congressional hearings and fines and calls to action, but a spokesman for the Colorado Parks and Wildlife said there’s nothing that...

The Environmental Protection Agency will hold a public meeting in Durango to discuss mine waste contamination of the Animas River Friday afternoon. The EPA said its workers triggered the release of a million gallons of waste while using heavy machinery to investigate pollutants at the Gold King Mine north of Silverton, Colorado. The agency plans to answer questions and share information about the waste at the board room of the County Administration Building at 1101 E. 2nd Avenue in Durango. The meeting is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. KOB's crew reported seeing the sludge cross the state line into New Mexico...

How often do we see sad stories such as this in the news? Evil industrialists carelessly create a swath of damage across our pristine natural resources through pollution and reckless destruction. Another such event took place in Colorado this week when millions of gallons of toxic, metal laden waste water were dumped into a local stream, feeding into the local river system used by swimmers and fishermen. And the culprit for this horrendous act was… the Environmental Protection Agency. A team of U.S. regulators probing contamination at a Colorado gold mine accidentally released a million gallons (3.8 million liters)...

Industry blasts suggestion as harmful to the country. A conservation group that has succeeded in dealing recent legal setbacks to western Colorado coal mines called Thursday for a phase-out of federal coal leasing to help combat climate change. “It’s time for the Interior Department to shut it down,” Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy Program director for WildEarth Guardians, said in a news release. The group outlined a plan for ending the federal coal program over 10 to 25 years through a moratorium on leasing publicly owned coal, retiring existing leases that aren’t producing, honestly reporting the climate impacts of the...

Days after the Boy Scouts of America lifted a blanket ban on gay leaders, a Utah group that pressed for the legalization of gay marriage in the state announced Tuesday it will sponsor a Boy Scout troop.Mark Lawrence with the group Restore Our Humanity said getting the troop approved and running might be an uphill battle in conservative Utah, where most troops are sponsored by the Mormon church. But he noted the new troop could be a model for the future."I think it's important for us to do this now," Lawrence said at a news conference. He added welcoming gay...

The sage grouse population has exploded in the last two years, growing by nearly two-thirds from more than 49,000 males in 2013 to more than 80,000 this year. ... This is encouraging news for the bird, and for the people whose lives would be turned upside down by the federal government if it still insists on listing the critter as an endangered species on the brink of extinction. The report considered the population across the bird’s 11-state habitat, with specific news on the growth in Colorado numbers ... The report falls on the heels of a gloom and doom forecast...

The renewed national scrutiny of the Confederate flag has officials again considering changing the name of Utah’s Negro Bill Canyon, though the title that some find offensive is a point of historical pride for others. Grand County Councilwoman Mary McGann said the name of the picturesque canyon in southern Utah is outdated at best. “We should evolve,” she said Wednesday.

Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz had some harsh words for EPA Chief Administrator Gina McCarthy during a hearing Wednesday regarding the agency’s handling of an employee who repeatedly sexually harassed interns. For the past couple of years, Republican lawmakers have been investigating reports of misconduct at the EPA from employees watching porn everyday while on the job to an agency employee who sexually harassed interns and was not reported to the authorities and continued to work at the agency for years. “This is a predator who was fed a steady diet of interns,” Chaffetz told McCarthy during the hearing. “The...